Printing Admission Tickets

Transcription

1 Printing Admission Tickets Overview CounterPoint can be used to print admission tickets for shows, public attractions, museums, etc. from Point of Sale. Like all forms, admission tickets are completely customizable. You choose the size of the ticket, the information to print on it, and how that information will appear on the ticket. Printing admission tickets requires a printer that is programmable using ASCII characters, (such as the Barcode Blaster or Eltron label printer), and supports a Quantity to print field in the label Header. For each admission ticket item you sell in Ticket Entry, the admission ticket form sends a formatted label header that contains the item s quantity in the Quantity to print field. For example, if you sell 5 adult admissions, CounterPoint sends a single form command to the printer, to print 5 individual tickets. Useful fields in the Line item area of the form that are available for printing include: Ticket number, Ticket date, Ticket time, Order number, Customer number, Customer name, P.O. number, User initials, and System date. This document explains the process of setting up admission tickets, using the following admission ticket as an example. Refer to the CounterPoint Electronic Documentation for further information about Forms and Form Fields.

2 Printing Admission Tickets 2 Defining an admission ticket form The first step in creating an admission ticket is to define a Point of Sale form customized for your admission ticket needs. Select Setup / Point of Sale / Forms. 1. Form ID Enter an ID that will represent your admission ticket in the list of Point of Sale forms. 2. Type Select Ticket to display a ticket form. 3. Description Enter a description for your ticket. 4. Prompt Enter the text to display during ticket entry that will prompt the user to print the ticket. In this case Print Ticket? is the text that will appear. 5. Print in order by Select: To print items on the form: Line number In order by line number. Item number In order by item number. Bin location In order by bin location. Cat/sub-cat In order by category/sub-category. NOTE: Multi-location tickets will be printed in order by line item location, and within each location, in the order you specified (line, item, bin, or category).

3 Printing Admission Tickets 3 6. Components to print Components are not applicable to admission tickets. Select None. 7. Category totals? Category totals are not applicable to admission tickets. Select No. 8. Item notes ID If you want to print item notes on this ticket, enter the item note ID. If the ticket doesn t include item notes, leave <blank>. If an item has a note on file with an ID that matches the note ID entered here, that note prints if you select and include the Item notes line item field on the ticket form. 9. Customer notes ID Customer notes are not applicable to admission tickets. Press Enter to leave <blank>. 10. Mask credit card # s? When you choose to mask credit card numbers, only the last 4 digits of the card number are visible on receipts and invoices. The preceding numbers are masked by asterisks. 11. Width Enter the number of columns that may be printed on the ticket. Your entry here is determined by the character width of your literals, as well as your printer s characters per inch setting (or pitch ). 12. Paginated? This setting is not applicable to admission tickets. Select No. 13. Merge identical lines? This setting is not applicable to admission tickets. Select No. View/change form layout? Select Yes. The Form ID screen appears, allowing you to define over 200 fields to print on this ticket.

4 Printing Admission Tickets 4 Sample admission ticket The sample admission ticket shown below represents a single admission to a ride at an amusement park. The ticket includes the name of the amusement park (10 Flags Over Synchronics), the name of the ride (The DeLorean Express), the condition of use (1 Ride for Ticket Date ONLY!), a barcode, and the date that the ticket is good for. We will refer to this sample ticket throughout the following sections as ticket field configuration is explained. Refer back to it for a better understanding of how the line items defined in the following instructions result in a specific ticket layout.

5 Printing Admission Tickets 5 The following table breaks down the line items entered by line number and by type. It illustrates user input and the resulting text output that CounterPoint sends to the printer for each line item. Line # Line item type Line item input Output to printer 1 Printer header instruction! ! Line item field Qty sold 5 2 Printer header instruction PITCH 100 PITCH Printer header instruction WIDTH 375 WIDTH Literal STRING 12X STRING 12X Literal 10 FLAGS OVER SYNCHRONICS 10 FLAGS OVER SYNCHRONICS 5 Literal ULTRA_FONT A ULTRA_FONT A Line item field Description 1 The DeLorean Express 6 Literal STRING 9X STRING 9X Literal 1 Ride for Ticket Date ONLY! 1 Ride for Ticket Date ONLY! 7 Literal R270 12X R270 12X Line item field Ticket date mm / dd / yy 8 Literal BARCODE CODE BARCODE CODE Line item field Item barcode Literal END END When the line items are grouped and sent to the printer, they look like this:! PITCH 100 WIDTH 375 STRING 12X FLAGS OVER SYNCHRONICS ULTRA_FONT A The DeLorean Express STRING 9X Ride for Ticket Date ONLY! R270 12X /1/03 BARCODE CODE END

6 Printing Admission Tickets 6 Defining admission ticket fields Admission tickets consist of a blank header field and multiple line item fields. For every line that appears on your admission ticket, you must enter printing commands to determine how the printer will format the information on the ticket what font to use, what size text to print, and where to print it. You then instruct the printer to print specific information, such as the name of an attraction, the ticket date, a barcode, etc. Your admission ticket will be made up of three types of line items: Printer header instructions Literals (text) Line items fields It is usually necessary to fill out two screens to complete a single line item. On the first screen, you use a literal to enter printing commands for the line item. These commands determine how the line item will appear on the ticket. On the second screen you enter the text or field that represents the line item value. For each line item, enter a line number and a column to indicate where to print the string command. At Field number, press Enter to insert a literal or make a selection from the list of line item fields. It is not necessary to use conditionals when printing line items. At Text enter a literal value. All three types of line items make use of literals. NOTE: When entering information on separate screens, pay close attention to text positioning. In order for the printer to correctly interpret your instructions, line items must be on the same line number and there must be a space between character strings (i.e., their columns cannot overlap). Printer header instructions Printer header instructions define how the printer works with the label that will be your admission ticket. NOTE: For all admission tickets, you must include a header section that is a blank line. This is the only time you will select Headers as the Field group. At Field number, select Blank line to ensure that the header contains no information.

7 Printing Admission Tickets 7 The remaining Field group entries are all Line items. The first line items you enter on an admission ticket are the printer header instructions. Printer header instructions contain information such as print mode, position of the label in the printer, print pitch, and label width. Your input here is determined by the printer you are using. For the sample ticket, a Barcode Blaster was used. See your printer manual for detailed information about the formatting requirements of your printer. NOTE: Printer header instructions are literals that contain specific instructions for the printer. They do not appear as text on the ticket. For our sample ticket s printer header instructions, we entered three literals and one line item field, as required by our Barcode Blaster printer. The first printer header instruction on our sample ticket is the literal! At Field number we entered Literal. At Text we entered! On our Blaster printer,! specifies ASCII mode, 0 specifies the starting position of the label, 100 specifies Dot time, and 200 specifies the MaxY # of the line that will be memory mapped. On the following screen, we entered the line item field Qty sold. This field is included in the printer header instructions so that the printer knows how many tickets to print. This field is a continuation of the previous line item and is entered on line number 1 in column 13, since the literal entered on the prior screen was 11 characters long and there must be a space between each part of the line item.

8 Printing Admission Tickets 8 The next printer header instruction is the literal PITCH 100, entered on line number 2, column 1. On a Blaster printer, PITCH sets the print density in dots per inch and must be placed after the header line and before any string command. The final printer header instruction is the literal WIDTH 375, entered on line number 3, column 1. On a Blaster printer, WIDTH sets the width of the printed label. The Width command is measured in hundredths of an inch and is used for printing on label stock that is narrower than the print head. NOTE: You must enter the printer header instructions prior to any string commands. Literals Literals are line items for which you specify the text that will appear on the ticket. To insert a literal, press Enter at Field number. Two literals are used on our sample ticket, 10 Flags Over Synchronics and 1 Ride for Ticket Date ONLY! Because these lines were created for the admission ticket itself, they cannot be retrieved from CounterPoint and are entered as literals. As with the printer header instructions, you must first define how the printer will format the literal and then enter the actual text to be printed. On our sample ticket, the printer header instructions are contained in line numbers 1-3, making line number 4 the next line available.

9 Printing Admission Tickets 9 We placed the printing commands for the first literal on line number 4, column 1. At Field number, we entered Literal. At Text, we entered the printing command STRING 12X This command instructs the printer to print an ASCII character string with a font size of 12 X 6. The string will start at the horizontal position of 7 and the vertical position of 2 on the label. Refer to the sample ticket on page 4 to see how these printing commands place the literal on the ticket. On the next screen, we entered 4 at Line number. At Column, we entered 18, because this literal follows the printing instructions entered on the previous screen (STRING 12X16 7 2). That line of text is 16 characters long, plus a blank space, so the literal must begin in column 18. At Field number, we entered Literal. At Text, we entered 10 FLAGS OVER SYNCHRONICS.

10 Printing Admission Tickets 10 We placed the printing commands for the second literal on line number 5, column 1. At Field number, we entered Literal. At Text, we entered the printing guideline STRING 9X This command instructs the printer to print an ASCII character string with a font size of 9 X 12. On the ticket, the string will start at the horizontal position of 40 and the vertical position of 70. On the next screen, we entered 5 for Line number to continue the literal. At Column, we entered 19, because the string command is 17 characters long and we are continuing on the same line with a space between line items. At Field number we entered Literal. At Text, we entered 1 Ride for Ticket Date ONLY!.

11 Printing Admission Tickets 11 Line item fields Line item fields retrieve information from records in the CounterPoint database such as tickets and item records. You can choose from over 200 line item fields to place a specific value on your admission ticket. For the sample ticket, we used values from three line item fields: the item s Description 1 value, the Ticket date, and the Item barcode 1. Item description On the sample ticket, the name of the attraction, The DeLorean Express, is the item description in CounterPoint. To place the item description on our ticket, we entered the literal ULTRA_FONT A on line number 6, in column 1. ULTRA_FONT instructs the printer to print text on the label in a smoother font than the STRING command on line 5 produces. A40 is the font type. 1 specifies the horizontal starting position of the text. 30 specifies the vertical starting position of the text. On the following screen, at Field number, we selected the line item field Description 1. At Line number we entered 6. At Column we entered 21. CounterPoint retrieves the item s description from the item record and prints it according to the commands entered on the previous screen.

12 Printing Admission Tickets 12 Ticket date The current ticket date is positioned vertically on the edge of the sample ticket. To accomplish this, we entered the literal R270 12X on line number 7, in column 1. R270 replaces the string command and rotates the text 270 degrees clockwise. The print is in a font size of 12 X 16. On the label, the string will start at the horizontal position of 350 and the vertical position of 150. On the following screen, at Field number, we selected the line item field Ticket date. At Line number we entered 7, At Column we entered 20. At Format, we selected the format in which the date appears. CounterPoint retrieves this date from the current ticket and prints it according to the commands entered on the previous screen.

13 Printing Admission Tickets 13 Item barcode Our sample ticket also contains a barcode. To place the barcode on our ticket, we entered the literal BARCODE CODE on line number 8, column 1. The command BARCODE instructs the printer to print a barcode. CODE 39 specifies the barcode type. 100 specifies the horizontal starting position. 150 specifies the vertical starting position. 60 specifies the height of the barcode. On the following screen at Field number, we selected the line item field Item barcode 1. At Line number we entered 8. At Column we entered 27. CounterPoint retrieves this value from the item record and prints it according to the commands entered on the previous screen. End command Admission tickets do not contain a Totals section. Instead you must define a Literal value of END. This command is required at the end of all label forms.

14 Printing Admission Tickets 14 Admission ticket notes In Setup / Point of Sale / Device codes, define the printer as a Normal printer (not a Windows printer) attached to the workstation s local parallel or serial port. It is not necessary to enter Literals and Line item fields in a particular order. Admission ticket report For the sample ticket, the following report was generated in Setup / Reports / Point of Sale / Forms. This report enables you to clearly view the configuration of the fields on your admission ticket form.

15 Printing Admission Tickets 15 Printing an admission ticket To print admission tickets from Ticket Entry, you must create a function key that corresponds to the prompt you entered on the admission ticket form. In Setup / Point of Sale / Registers, select a printer. Enter a Device code and Device ID. At Form ID, select the form ID you defined for admission tickets. On the Ticket Entry screen, the Print Ticket? prompt appears as an F3 function key, enabling the user to press F3 and print the number of admission tickets specified in the Qty field. NOTE: To verify the commands you are sending to your printer, in Setup / Point of Sale / Registers, at Device ID, temporarily replace the port name with a file name such as AdmTkt.txt. When you print an admission ticket, CounterPoint will create a file in the top-level directory that contains the ASCII characters you defined on the admission ticket form. This file will be similar to the example on page 5.